Posts Tagged ‘have you heard the new…?’

This is Arcade Fire‘s best album. It’s big, sprawling, epic, ambitious, but focused, and in every conceivable way it just works. It returns the band to the darkness they first visited on Neon Bible, but James Murphy and the dancefloor influence brought to this album make it sound different – and more propulsive – than anything the band has done up until this point. Admittedly, the emotion and honesty of Funeral do not make a return; the lyrics may be the most lacking aspect of the album, though they’re still solid for the most part. But that was then, this is now. And on its own terms, this album knocks it out of the park big time.

The precedent for this album – despite what Owen Pallett says – is London Calling and Sandanista! No other album in memory features a super-white band trying their hand at musical styles as distant as Carribean music with anywhere close to the success that Arcade Fire achieve here. There’s also rock songs, pop songs, dance songs, krautrock, other stuff. And it all just works. The songs are all like six minutes long – but they also just work, because the band and/or Murphy apparently never run out of ideas of ways to keep things interesting and exciting.

I like the first half of the album better. It starts with some long intro thing that’s all arty – I’ve listened to it but I skip it when I re-listen to the album. Most of the heavy hitters are on this side – “Reflektor”, “We Exist”, “Normal Person”, and “Joan Of Ark” stand out in particular. Most of these songs could serve as centerpieces for lesser albums, but here they’re each just another track. “Normal Person” I find especially interesting because it’s got great lyrics but the very thing that makes me enjoy it less might be the most brilliant aspect of it. I’m sure I’m wrong about this but the song features a big, loud, blunt guitar sound blaring out the songs main four chords during the chorus, and every time I hear it I think 1) this is one of the most boring aesthetics they could’ve used for this song 2) maybe the use of the big guitar is kind of a snarky joke on the part of the band, as in this is the sound a “normal person” wants to hear in radio rock song – just big, blaring guitar.

The second half, as Pitchfork wrote, is more ‘airy’. The songs are not as sonically ‘grounded’ or memorable for the most – part – they’re still very good. Here “Afterlife” does seem to serve as a centerpiece of sorts, providing the big, beautiful flagship track for the side before allowing “Supersymmetry” to close things in neat, logical, shimmering fashion.

Is there much to the whole Orpheus referencing the album makes? I don’t know if it’s as deep as we’d like it to be – you sojourn into the underworld to bring your love out of it. I suppose it could serve as a metaphor for the album itself in that it’s a wealth of beauty that resides sonically and moodily in the underworld. I wouldn’t make a big deal out of it. A big deal doesn’t need to made out of it. Arcade Fire brought their A-game to this one. As in the A-game brought their A-game. They sound excited. All the hype-work they did around the album seems to confirm that impression, though it doesn’t need to. The sounds on this album are made by a band that’s not sounded this alive in almost a decade, when they sounded more alive than any other band on Earth. Maybe they needed to go to the underworld to pull it off again. But man, they totally did.

I will state the obvious: as Gold Soundz is “co-presenting” the Yamantaka//Sonic Titan show at the Garrison in Toronto on November 6th, I have a bit of an incentive to write that their new album is awesome. However, did you ever stop and think, “How the hell is Gold Soundz – currently based in Tel Aviv, Israel where its main man is serving in the IDF without much spare time – co-presenting a show in Toronto, Canada?” Perhaps you did. The answer is that even from the other side of the Earth, I’ve been maintaining my relationship with Embrace and I’ve been working with them (largely by bugging them) to put on a show with Yamantaka//Sonic Titan, who put on one of the most original stage shows I’ve ever seen and are just are super badass and have awesome taste in manga and classic Japanese rock. And I’ve been doing that for a long time because I’ve been pretty freakin’ psyched on this band for a long time.

But still, maybe the new album sucks? Maybe everything they did before rocked but now they dropped the ball Spider Man 3 style and put out the musical equivalent of emo Peter Parker?

They could’ve. But they didn’t. The new album, UZU rocks very hard. And those are the best words I could use to describe it. True, early single “One” has a kind of Canadian First Nations deal and the band is most personified by their Noh opera influence, but these things add a strong flavour to their purely “awesome” prog-ish hard rock edge – they’re not the whole story. UZU is really first and foremost a very operatic (lots of piano), very classic hard rock album – no world music of the week shtick here.

That being said, it is weird. It’s not weird in a “what’s going on here” way but weird as in it gives off an otherworldly and inhuman vibe. Lead singer Ruby Kato Atwood personifies this well, sounding like a remote ice goddess singing from the top of a snow covered mountain during a blizzard of metallic guitars. It’s also an album that feels dark and incredibly momentous. In that sense – though only that sense – it’s kind of like Pink Floyd‘s The Wall. Sure, the guitars and synths also have a strong 70’s vibe to them, but the band’s ethnic influences (and punk attitude – see “Hall Of Mirrors”) prevent them from ever sounding like revivalists.

I have no idea what the album’s about. I listened to this on Pitchfork without a lyric sheet (but with a lot of awesome animations and drawings). The end of the world seems like a fair guess. It doesn’t matter though. Every songs kicks ass, though this is, as in the old prog tradition, very AOR. And from start to finish, very, very badass.

The Strokes were one of the bands that made me fall in love with music, so whenever they release a new album, it’s a big deal. Are people talking about this back in North America? Hasn’t been the stuff of much discussion in the IDF, believe it or not. Maybe it’s because it’s coming so soon after the underwhelming Angles. In any case, let’s get into this.

So, it looks like we’re gonna have to get used to The Strokes 2.0. Comedown Machine is clearly the new The Strokes that we got on Angles – less NYC cool, more simple, old-school pop-rock band with great guitar-arrangements and a frontman that keep things interesting. But they’re more confident and comfortable in their new skin this time, and they sound good…most of the time. The songs are by and large better and more consistent than those on Angles, and the band feels more engaged in them. The first half of the album particularly impresses – as with Angles, that’s where they stuff most of the straight-on killer tracks, saving the more experimental but less-actually-good for the bottom half.

At this point I feel like I can live with and even enjoy these middle-period Strokes – I even half to give them credit for still sounding relevant while their old-school peers The Hives and even Jack White sound out of place in 2013’s bandiverse. Most of the credit, however, goes to Julian Casablancas, who sounds rejuvenated here – he continues to stretch he vocal abilities and expand his signiture singing territory with a lot more falsetto than we’re used to from the famously baritone-voiced frontman. The production – though similar in feel to Angles – is also a bit better, credit owed to producer Gus Oberg.

Like everyone who remembers 2001, I miss the Strokes of Is This It and Room On Fire and would prefer them – even solo Julian at his best – to the new Strokes. But I can still enjoy the band for their numerous strengths that remain on Comedown Machine.

In any case, it’s good to have My Bloody Valentine back with a new album. And not just any new album, but a new album that’s actually great. The extent to which it is a masterpiece may remain to be determined, but the fact is that this is a solid and often stunning album that somehow manages not to disappoint, and even improve melodically on the band’s past work.

The most amazing thing about the album, however, is that it actually sounds like the My Bloody Valentine album that I think we all wanted to hear as the follow-up to Loveless: all the churning, wall-of-noise guitars, the melodies, the sensuality – everything that made us love My Bloody Valentine in the first place is still there. I would’ve thought that after all this time and with Kevin Shields being as crazy as he’s gotta be they would’ve sprung something totally weird and unexpected on us all, but no, this is the exact My Bloody Valentine we know and love with a couple tweaks maybe in the rhythm department. Whereas Loveless‘ drums were all (or almost all) programmed on account of Colm Ó Cíosóig being extremely ill at the time and unable to play – and pushed far back in the mix – here the man is back in action and all percussion is given considerably more volume and attention. There’s been some writing about Kevin Shields having gotten into jungle music and drum n’ bass or whatever after Loveless, but the influence of such genres is, if not always exactly subtle, at least restrained.

Honestly, if that’s all Shields has in him and we never get another My Bloody Valentine album – something I doubt anyone holding their breath for at this point – it’s cool. The man and the band didn’t have to do anything after Loveless, and the fact that they did and it’s this good is just like…you’re good. You passed. You made a solid amount of great art; you pass at life. That’s not to say it wouldn’t be amazing to hear Shields and MBV putting shit out on some conception of a regular basis – it would – but the pressure is off now. You made your masterpiece and you followed it up. Good stuff, bro.

I just heard this and nearly shit my pants or somethign. Funny, was just thinking the other day, “Hey, the Besnards are due for a new album sometime soon, eh?” and bam! Got hit by this mofo: “People Of The Sticks”, off an album called “Until In Excess, Imperceptible UFO” that drops April 2nd.

First thing I noticed is that this bitch sounds like a motherfucker; the Besnards’ lead man (and co-fronter) Jace Lasek is a producer of no little repute, but it sounds like he’s been taking Phil Spectre steroids or something here – everything sounds huge and gorgeous. And the sounds! The sounds of the song are so gorgeous, what with the synths and the vocals and guitars and apocalypse drums…

As a song, I think it’s pretty good, I feel like it’s got hooks, but I kind of can’t get over the actual sounds of this guy, they’re just a whole new level of awesome – and anyways, the Besnards’ songs always were kind of dense and took a while to get used to, so it’s all good.

As for the album to come: I’m feeling good about it. They sound energized and inspired, and if they can stretch what I’m hearing here to full length, it’s gonna be a killer.